Ethereum Community Criticizes Bloomberg Analyst Over Misinformation

According to Cointelegraph, Bloomberg’s senior exchange-traded fund (ETF) analyst Eric Balchunas faced backlash from the Ethereum community after sharing a controversial excerpt from Benjamin Hart’s book, Bitcoin: Beginner’s Guide. The now-deleted post suggested that Ether (ETH) is not as secure as Bitcoin (BTC) and claimed the U.S. government could potentially shut down Ethereum by instructing Amazon Web Services (AWS) to disable its cloud services. AWS hosts 28.4% of Ethereum nodes, which is insufficient to completely disrupt the blockchain. The book also posited that a rogue state or terrorist organization could kidnap Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin to extort Ether. This claim was met with strong criticism from Ethereum educator Anthony Sassano, who labeled it as “absolute blatant misinformation and pretty much complete propaganda.” Sassano expressed his disapproval of Balchunas for sharing the excerpt and accused him of deleting the post to avoid backlash. Consensys product manager Jimmy Ragosa echoed Sassano’s sentiments, describing the excerpt as “the most propaganda-ridden paragraph ever.” Balchunas’ colleague, Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart, anticipated the critical responses, while Balchunas himself opted to leave up only the Bitcoin sections of the book. In light of these events, Ethereum developers have been focusing on promoting solo staking and reducing hardware requirements to enhance the blockchain’s decentralization.